I don’t hide what I feel to be mysterious. I do it because the last time I let someone see all of it, they didn’t know what to do with it. So now I keep it quiet. Folded between the pauses, softened into the laughter, tucked into the warmth of presence without pressure.

It’s still there. Every word I don’t say. Every look I hold back. Every moment I could lean in but don’t. Not because I don’t want to, but because I do. And wanting has broken me before.

There’s a part of me that wants to tell you everything. To pull you into the center of what I feel and let you stay there. But the other part, the one that survived, remembers what it’s like when care becomes a burden. When closeness becomes too much.

So I speak gently. I reach without reaching. I offer you something real, but I don’t name it. Because naming it might change us. And I’m not sure I can survive losing something that never officially began.